This Weeks @DigitalNibbles: Cyborg Anthropology with Amber Case

I'll admit it, one of the best parts of doing the Digital Nibbles podcast series is getting to meet new and interesting folks. A lot of the these people are brought to the show via my co-host @techallyson a.k.a Allyson Klein who also moonlights as a Marketing Director at Intel. (j/k)

Our upcoming show on Wednesday is going to be a great one with featuring a Amber Case who is a self described Cyborg Anthropologist.. what? Yes, someone who studies Cyberanthropology, What is that you ask? Well, I had no idea either so I went to the "trusty" Wikipedia page which stated it as.

"a subbranch of sociocultural anthropology that deals with cybernetic systems, the culturally informed interrelationships between human beings and technologies. These interrelationships include the attempts to fuse technological artifacts with human and other biological organisms, with human society, and with the culturally shaped environment."

Professionally Amber is a co-founder of a startup in PDX (Portland) called Geoloqi that has developed a mobile geolocation and geo-fencing API that is really quite cool, but even more interesting is what and how she describes herelf as a "cyber anthropologist."  She has spoken at TED, as well as written about the subject in Wired, Forbes, TNW and TIME and recently spoke at SXSW.

She describes Cyborg Anthropology as: someone who "looks at how humans and non human objects interact with each other, and how that changes culture. So, for instance, we have these things in our pockets that cry, and we have to pick them up and soothe them back to sleep, and then we have to feed them every night by plugging them into the wall, right? And at no other time in history have we had these really strange non human devices that we take care of as if they are real. And we're very dependent upon them. So that's one of the aspects that I'm studying, the idea of mobile technology and its effect on people's relationships. Another thing is the idea of extending into the second self online, through an avatar. So studying how people interact with each other through these little technosocial interactions, versus just the analog interactions, is another aspect of cyborg anthropology."

You can finder more info on her at Twitter, Linked-In, and at her blog or tune into the Digital Nibbles Podcast this wednesday at 6pm Eastern / 3pm Pacific.

Big Bucks for Virtustream & Webinar

We're on a roll, Virtustream has secured an additional $15 million dollars in  venture capital funding, bringing our total equity raised to $75 million to date.  We'll be using the funds to further accelerate Virtustream's growth, accelerate development of our xStream cloud solution, expand our geographic coverage and support the rapid growth in the cloud market.

A little background, The xStream platform was purpose built to address the exacting requirements of enterprise customers as they move their IT and applications to the cloud.  xStream delivers secure enterprise class clouds, with application level SLAs, supporting multiple hypervisors and is the industry's first cloud solution to use ‘µVM' (See - A Kilowatt for the Cloud?) It’ technology providing efficiency significantly beyond traditional virtualization and enabling a truly consumption based pricing model.  Virtustream offers xStream, Enomaly and Spotcloud worldwide and has offices in New York, Washington, London, San Francisco, Toronto and operates four data-centers worldwide.

For an in depth look at our compelling technology based on the Micro-VM (µVM™), please attend our interactive webinar on Wednesday, March 21 at 8am PT/11am ET/3pm GMT. Register here. 

Going forward you will see further hybrid and federation cloud capabilities as we enhance our solutions.  Check us out at www.virtustream.com or follow us on twitter @virtustream 

µVM - A Kilowatt for the Cloud?

It's been interesting getting settled into a new company, specially one that's not mine. From expense reports to new platforms and new systems to learn, I'm actually quite enjoying the change of pace and scenery. Over the last couple of weeks a big part of my job has been getting a feel for our Virtustream technology and platforms. One of the more interesting descriptions I keep hearing is our "µVM" (micro VM) tech, the basis for how our cloud is measured, metered, and billed.

First of all let me start out with the term. Micro (μ) is a prefix that comes from the Greek μικρός (mikrós), meaning "small". It's also a prefix in the metric system denoting a factor of 10-6 (one millionth). So its ideal when talking about a unit of cloud measurement, at least from a marketing standpoint.

Marketing gimmics are useful, but lets take a closer look at the actual technical analogy. When I ask what it is, I keep hearing the same response. Me: What's a µVM ? Geek: It's like a kilowatt for the Cloud?

According to Wikipedia, one watt is the rate at which work is done. Or to put it another way the measurement of the actual work or power required to do something or the amount of energy consumed while doing it. It's a unit of measure for getting something done - a perfect anology for cloud, where we are typically forced to look at cloud  from the point of view of a traditional CPU. But really, the idea of RAM or GHZ as the basis for work is a little off the mark for a uniform unit of measure, it's importance is in a group or collection of elements. What we're really talking about is how much aggregate resources are required to get something done, and moreover how much those resource will cost on the smallest of increments as possible. So essentially a µVM is an aggregate, a collection of technical items that are gathered together to form a total quantity (in our case for cloud resources). It allows us to pack a much greater quantity of resources into a much smaller area. (How you ask? That's another post)

So enter the Kilowatt for the Cloud. Although technically if we're talking about "Micro" maybe the MicroWatt is a better phrase, it's equal to one millionth (10−6) of a watt and uses the same µ symbol :)

Reviving The Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum (CCIF)

It's been two years since for a variety factors we decided to stop posting to the Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum. Over that time, a lot has changed within the industry, as well as in my personal life (two kids) and professional life (Enomaly sold). The cloud has gone from a fringe concept to a mainstream phenomenon. A phenomenon that can be seen in almost every part of information technology today. We've seen open to data center alliances to open server specifications to open stacks, to say the least, the need for "open" has propagated far and wide. But alas, there is still no uniform access for a truly interoperable cloud. A single stack, hardware specification or alliance has yet to result in any global interoperability among cloud services.

Over the past several months, I have been busy in the acquisition of my previous company Enomaly to Virtustream. Now that this has completed I have time to re-engage in some of my previous passions, including the nurturing of cloud interoperability amongst other cloud advocacy activities. I have been approached by many folks in the industry over the last two years to revive CCIF. Like any community, I don't expect all of your to jump back into the fray as I understand we need to rebuild trust in the message and discussion. I believe this discussion must resume. There are currently more than 1300 members within the CCIF mailing list and another 3000 on our linkedin Group. If you are no longer interested in cloud interoperability, please take the this chance to un-subscribe. If you are as passionate about this subject as I am. Then I encourage you to speak up and re-engage in the conversation.

You can subscribe to the mailing list here > http://ruv.net/a/1eu or our linkedin group

Condo Computing (Own the base - Rent the Spike)

There's a long standing joke in the cloud space. One that can be summed up as  "All your bases R belong to your cloud provider" a play on the pre-internet meme  “all your bases are belong to us” The mantra is one of not only lock-in but one that has become a fundamental cloud business premise based upon what has become a central requirement of a complete and total migration to the cloud. One that assumes a binary choice must be made when deciding to use cloud centric services. But the reality is the choice is one that must take a wholistic view of many loosely coupled parts both local and remote. An aggregated (hybrid) approach that understands that key metrics are constantly changing and baseline capacity requirements are no longer as simple as mine or yours. But instead built upon the base of a partnership within a federated group of cloud services yours and mine.

Last week I had the honor of meeting with the director of infrastructure for a major California University. During our conversation he describe a concept he called "Condo Computing" whereby a collective group of campuses are able grain greater efficiencies by grouping together physical server assets into jointly managed racks. Think of it as a  physical collective of servers – old school multi tenancy. In essence each cabinet is like a condo complex where each condo unit is a server or blade jointly managed collectively but owned independently, yet enjoy secured access to a shared on premise cloud environment for spikes in demand and disasters avoidance. Continuing this analogy, each resident owns their baseline and has the ability to rent the spike. Yes, it's zynga's mantra of “Own the base - Rent the Spike” in action in the most unconventional of places.

The concept is ideal for the emerging hybrid federated architectures being adopted by enterprises who are now beginning take their first steps into the cloud. It's an architecture built on the knowledge and abilities they have in house while also allowing the economics and flexibility found in using secure remotely accessible cloud capacity. An evolutionary step forward while keeping one foot on the ground.